The White Lady stood on the steps of Meduseld, staring out across the plains.
The guardsmen said nothing about her silent, pensive presence. They were used to her comings and goings. Often she would come and simply stand for hours out here, watching her kingdom light afire with sunset, and then turn blue and silver under the rising moon. For whatever reason the King's niece came, the guards would leave her be.
Today she assumed her usual strait-backed stance, and stared determinedly across her country. Maybe if she looked hard enough, long enough, she would see the end of her captivity. Maybe if she squinted she would see the keys to her cage come riding to her upon a horse of wind and freedom.
Maybe she could escape just long enough to remember why it mattered.
The days were becoming so monotonous it was unbearable. For weeks upon end it was the same thing, the same routine in her uncle's darkened halls. She went nowhere, did nothing, spoke to no one but her uncle and the Worm, and they no longer counted as people. Her uncle could not hear her, it seemed, when she spoke softly to him through the deafening silence. The Worm, Grima, she only spoke to when absolutely necessary, or out of anger when he spoke to her first. And when these exchanges happened, they could hardly be counted as conversations. She would speak in short, icy sentences. He would leer and drop greasy words from his tongue.
She was trapped, as she had always feared. She was bound by love and duty to stay by her uncle's side, but she could not take pleasure in it. She wanted adventure, excitement, thrills – the life a daughter of kings should have. Instead she stayed in the darkened halls of an aging king who ruled a once-proud country that had now fallen from splendor.
I wish things would change, she thought. I wish the tide would turn, that something would happento end all this. I wish someone would free me, my uncle, my country... all of us, as I cannot.
Eowyn never uttered her wish. She thought it fervently, though, and she imagined that someone other than herself heard it.
Will I die like this? She wondered. Wishing for freedom and flight from behind the bars of duty?
Maybe she would. But as she turned with a sigh to go back inside, something caught her eye. The White Lady halted. On the plains, coming closer were three horses, and three riders. They bore no standard, and did not appear to be Rohirrim, though at this distance it was hard to tell. Puzzled, she watched them for a time, and then turned and made her way back in.
It didn't matter anyways. Nothing would ever change. Her country and her king were doomed for the downward road.
Three riders would not change anything.